Do Elite ‘Power Sport’ Athletes Have a Genetic Advantage? – “A specific gene variant is more frequent among elite athletes in power sports…. A ‘functional polymorphism’ of the angiotensiogen (AGT) gene is two to three times more common in elite power athletes, compared to nonathletes or even elite endurance athletes, according to the new research by Paweł Cięszczyk, PhD, of University of Szczecin, Poland, and colleagues.”

Ballet Dancers’ Brains Adapt to Stop Them Getting in a Spin – or maybe they start off with somewhat different brain structures: “Scientists have discovered differences in the brain structure of ballet dancers that may help them avoid feeling dizzy when they perform pirouettes…. The brain scans revealed differences between the groups in two parts of the brain: an area in the cerebellum where sensory input from the vestibular organs is processed and in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for the perception of dizziness. The area in the cerebellum was smaller in dancers.”

Genetic study pushes back timeline for first significant human population expansion – “Using new genetic tools, the authors conclude that the first significant expansion of human populations appears to be much older than the emergence of farming and herding, dating back to the Paleolithic (60,000-80,000 years ago) rather than Neolithic age (10,000 years ago). They also suggest that strong Paleolithic expansions may have favored the emergence of sedentary farming in some populations during the Neolithic.” – h/t malcolm pollack!

New Approach to Explaining Evolution’s Big Bang – “[T]he Cambrian Explosion was preceded by a rise in sea level that submerged vast swaths of land, eroding the drowned rocks…. But these great floods also poisoned the ocean. The erosion of the coastlines released calcium, which can be toxic to cells. In order to survive, animals had to evolve ways to rid themselves of the poison. One solution may have been to pack the calcium into crystals, which eventually evolved into shells, bones, and other hard tissues. Dr. Smith doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that several different lineages of bilaterians evolved hard tissues during the Cambrian explosion, and not sooner.”

Understanding how infants acquire new words across cultures – “[I]n English, 24-month-old infants were better able to learn novel verbs for novel actions (e.g., petting) if the surrounding noun phrases were explicitly mentioned (e.g., ‘The girl is petting the dog’) than if they were dropped from the sentence (e.g., ‘Look. Petting!’). In contrast, the new research shows that in Korean (a language in which noun phrases are typically dropped in conversation) 24-month-olds were better able to learn novel verbs for novel actions if the surrounding noun phrases (e.g., the girl, the dog) were dropped; in fact, unlike English-acquiring infants, those acquiring Korean struggled if the nouns were explicitly mentioned.” – don’t know, unfortunately, what the ethnicities of these infants are.

The Science Fiction Future of Genetic Genealogy – “Next month at the American Society of Human Genetics 2013 meeting, researchers from AncestryDNA will present their work detailing the reconstruction of portions of the genomes of an 18th-century couple using detailed genealogical information and Identity-by-Descent (‘IBD’) DNA segments from several hundred descendants of the couple in the AncestryDNA database. In other words, researchers identified several hundred descendants of a certain couple living in the 1700s and then used the DNA shared by those descendants to recreate as much of the couples’ genomes as possible.” – cool! from the genetic genealogist.

Low-Hanging Fruit: Consider the Ant – “Some spiders somehow fly by using silken threads. They’ve been detected at altitudes over 4 km, and more than a thousand miles from land. The usual notion is that these threads catch air currents, but that may not be the real explanation. For one thing, they seem to be able to take off fairly rapidly in a dead calm. It looks instead as if these spiders manage to impart a negative charge to these threads and are then propelled upward by the atmospheric electric field – electrostatic levitation, a totally novel mechanism for flight.” – whoa! – from greg cochran.

Brainwashed by a microbe? – “*T. gondii* is being studied for possible behavioral effects mainly because it has attracted so much attention. But we’re probably being manipulated by other parasites. ‘A large number of parasitic organisms probably exist in helminths, protozoa, fungi, bacteria, archea and viruses that may influence the phenotype of their human host even more than the Toxoplasma. These organisms are, however, still waiting for research teams to engage in a systematic study of their influence on the human host.'” – from peter frost. previously.

When the Melting Pot Reaches a Boil – “If there is one constant in the travails of *Homo sapiens sapiens*, it is that he gets on best with his own kind. Yet to the social engineers who would shepherd us into multicult euphoria, it is as if these millennia of inter-ethnic strife didn’t exist.”

How Alcohol Conquered Russia – “A history of the country’s struggle with alcoholism, and why the government has done so little about it.” – take note of anatoly’s comments!

bonus: mitual shah – one of the good guys. one of the VERY good guys: Briton died saving children in terror mall – “A British marketing executive was shot dead in the Westgate massacre in Kenya after offering himself as a hostage to bargain for the lives of 33 children.”

“A Harvard Study titled ‘Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?’ [pdf] looks at figures for ‘intentional deaths’ throughout continental Europe and juxtaposes them with the U.S. to show that more gun control does not necessarily lead to lower death rates or violent crime.

“Because the findings so clearly demonstrate that more gun laws may in fact increase death rates, the study says that ‘the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths’ is wrong.

“For example, when the study shows numbers for Eastern European gun ownership and corresponding murder rates, it is readily apparent that less guns to do not mean less death. In Russia, where the rate of gun ownership is 4,000 per 100,000 inhabitants, the murder rate was 20.52 per 100,000 in 2002. That same year in Finland, where the rater of gun ownership is exceedingly higher — 39,000 per 100,000 — the murder rate was almost nill, at 1.98 per 100,000….

“And when the study focuses on intentional deaths by looking at the U.S. vs Continental Europe, the findings are no less revealing. The U.S., which is so often labeled as the most violent nation in the world by gun control proponents, comes in 7th — behind Russia, Estonia, Lativa, Lithuania, Belarus, and the Ukraine — in murders. America also only ranks 22nd in suicides.

“The murder rate in Russia, where handguns are banned, is 30.6; the rate in the U.S. is 7.8….”

oops. =/

so, the official gun ownership rate in russia is low. could there be a large cache of illegal guns out there? still — much higher homicide rates in eastern europe than in western.

here’s a table from the report for you to enjoy:

and here are some bits about my favorite little country that could:

“A second misconception about the relationship between firearms and violence attributes Europe’s generally low homicide rates to stringent gun control. That attribution cannot be accurate since murder in Europe was at an all‐time low *before* the gun controls were introduced. For instance, virtually the only English gun control during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the practice that police patrolled without guns. During this period gun control prevailed far less in England or Europe than in certain American states which nevertheless had — and continue to have — murder rates that were and are comparatively very high….

“Stringent gun controls were not adopted in England and Western Europe until after World War I. Consistent with the outcomes of the recent American studies just mentioned, these strict controls did not stem the general trend of ever‐growing violent crime throughout the post‐WWII industrialized world including the United States and Russia. Professor Malcolm’s study of English gun law and violent crime summarizes that nation’s nineteenth and twentieth century experience as follows:

“‘The peacefulness England used to enjoy was not the result of strict gun laws. When it had no firearms restrictions [nineteenth and early twentieth century] England had little violent crime, while the present extraordinarily stringent gun controls have not stopped the increase in violence or even the increase in armed violence.

“‘Armed crime, never a problem in England, has now become one. Handguns are banned but the Kingdom has millions of illegal firearms. Criminals have no trouble finding them and exhibit a new willingness to use them. In the decade after 1957, the use of guns in serious crime increased a hundredfold.’

“In the late 1990s, England moved from stringent controls to a complete ban of all handguns and many types of long guns. Hundreds of thousands of guns were confiscated from those owners law‐abiding enough to turn them in to authorities. Without suggesting this caused violence, the ban’s ineffectiveness was such that by the year 2000 violent crime had so increased that England and Wales had Europe’s highest violent crime rate, far surpassing even the United States….

“[T]he conclusions of the premier study of English gun control. Done by a senior English police official as his thesis at the Cambridge University Institute of Criminology and later published as a book, it found (as of the early 1970s), ‘Half a century of strict controls…has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of [handguns] in crime than ever before.’ The study also states that:

“‘No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less [in England before 1920] when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction….‘

hmmmm. i wonder what’s different about england now as opposed to back then?

Cultural modernity and behavioral modernity – “Some societies have gone farther than others along the trajectory that leads to cultural modernity and, in time, behavioral modernity.” – another great post from peter frost! (he forgot to mention the likely effects of mating patterns on societies, but that’s ok. (~_^) )

The Split Personality of America – “The 20 states scoring highest on Neuroticism are all bordering to the [mississippi] river or east of it. Of the 20 states that score the lowest on this trait, 16 are in the western region – including all of the bottom 10.” – nice post from staffan!

bonus: Suicide rate up sharply – “‘The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans climbed a startling 28 percent in a decade, a period that included the recession and the mortgage crisis, the government reported Thursday. The trend was most pronounced among white men and women in that age group.'” – from mr. mangan.

in this latest study, khrunin et al. took a look at a handful of different ethnic russian sub-populations (from different locations in russia) as well as some other eastern european groups. most of the samples from russia they collected themselves — the rest came from other studies. here’s a list of which groups were included and where they came from:

all of these samples were collected by the authors — except for those from tver — and the researchers ensured that the subjects AND their parents were originally from whatever region in which they happened to find them (i like that!).

the data from other studies which they used are described in this paper and include:

the data collected by khrunin et al. are really good, imho, since 1) they went to all the trouble of collecting samples from different regions of russia, and 2) the researchers tried to control for ethnic/regional origin. the quality of the data from all the other studies is kinda mixed, for my interests anyway. for instance, taking in samples in large, capital cities — meh — not so great. the residents of those cities could’ve come from all over the country. the northern versus southern sampling in germany is better; unfortunately, those data sets were combined together in this study (they’re kept separate in another really cool study which i will post about soon!). the estonian data set is interesting because the samples came from across the country. otoh, the polish data set is also interesting because it’s from such a specific region (and right on the border with germany).

ok. one last thing before i show you the results (i made a map!). different researchers define roh differently (*sigh*) — while there do seem to be some standards, there’s also quite a bit of variation, and different researchers choose to look for roh of varying lengths. in this study, the researchers looked for roh that were 1.5Mb in length (i’ve seen other researchers look for 1Mb in length). 1.5Mb is pretty short as far as roh go. if you recall, when a population has a lot of longer roh (like 4-8Mb or more), that’s a pretty good indicator of inbreeding. 1.5Mb — not so much. lots of short roh are a better indicator of something like a population bottleneck in the distant-ish past. but, what’s a girl to do? gotta work with what’s available, and if it’s short roh, so be it.

here (finally!) is the map. i took the data from this table. the map (first column of data) is of the average number of roh (of 1.5Mb) found in individuals in the different populations (nROH):

the most obvious thing to note is that the small, endogamous groups (the veps and the komi) have more roh than any of the other populations, except for the finns up in kuusamo (and i think that that’s probably due to a bottleneck — ethnic finns really only migrated to, and began to settle in, the area seriously in the 1600s, and i imagine it wasn’t very many of them — and being so far away from anybody else!). the veps and the komi are small populations and, historically, they didn’t marry out much (that’s why we have veps and komi people today), so they are somewhat inbred. definitely more so than the surrounding population.

another curious thing is the pretty high number of rohs in the baltic populations: latvians=0.58, estonians=0.61, and finns in helsinki=1.13. wow! what happened there? that’s something like three to five times the number of roh we see in italians (from tuscany) or germans.

the most interesting point for me, though, is that there is an east-west divide. it’s kinda vague, maybe, but i think it’s there: italians (tuscans) and germans at ca. 0.20, and then the czechs and poles right next door at 0.35 and 0.51 respectively. and everyone to the east, except the russians in kursk, higher again than those two figures. i think these results hint at what i’ve found in the history books on medieval europe, i.e. that western europeans began outbreeding earlier than eastern europeans and as a result wound up being more outbred. (see, for example, here and here — and the “mating patterns in europe series” below ↓ in left-hand column.)

finally, the authors of the study point out how it appears that the average number of roh in individuals in a population increases with latitude — and they mention that this has also been shown elsewhere (i’ll be posting on that paper — very soon!). if you look at the various ethnic russian populations, for instance, the russians down in kursk (Rus_Ku=0.28) and murom (Rus_Mu=0.39) have fewer roh than the russians further to the north in tver (Rus_Tv=0.49) and way up in mezen (Rus_Me=1.63!). however, the hgdp russian samples, apparently from the vologda oblast which is pretty far north, have relatively low numbers of roh (Rus_HGDP=0.44), so that doesn’t seem to fit. still, it does look like a real pattern to me. the authors suggest that this is due to the general pattern of how europe was settled (from the south to the north), as well as the fact that the farther north you go, the fewer people there are to mate with (so the more inbred you wind up being).

as i’ll show in my next post, though, while there does seem to be a north-south pattern to roh frequency in europe with more roh in populations to the north than the south, curiously the numbers seem to increase in southern europe as well (as compared to places in central europe like germany and france) — and strangely in the balkan region as well. i can’t imagine why! (^_^)

Genetic components of political preference – “[I]ndividuals tend to have a broad, evolution-based orientation toward being more conservative or liberal about various elements, such as protecting their in-group. That in-group orientation can translate into preferences on political issues such as reproductive rights, immigration, and war, as well as political behaviors such as voting behavior and political participation.”

Unchanging Essence – “Shea says that no anthropologist in his right mind would think that existing cultural variation among humans had anything to do with genetic differences between existing populations. It will be interesting to discover the alleles that made him say that.” – heh. – from greg cochran.

Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain – “The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.” – via steve sailer.

Why Almost Everyone in Russia Has a Dash Cam – “The sheer size of the country, combined with lax — and often corrupt — law enforcement, and a legal system that rarely favors first-hand accounts of traffic collisions has made dash cams all but a requirement for motorists. ‘You can get into your car without your pants on, but never get into a car without a dash cam,’ Aleksei Dozorov, a motorists’ rights activist in Russia told Radio Free Europe last year.”

Bacteria boost fixes symptoms of autism in mice – “[I]nfecting pregnant mice with molecules from a flu virus caused autism-like symptoms in their offspring. The pups were less social, squeaked less and displayed repetitive behaviours. They also had a ‘leaky’ gastrointestinal tract that allowed bacteria to move in and out of the lining. In addition, the bacteria present in their gut were significantly different from that found in mice without autism-like behaviour. Studies in humans have also identified links between gut bacteria and autism. For example, a 2011 study identified a significant lack of Bacteroides in children with autism.”

bonus bonus: Illegal Immigrations and Black Unemployment – “It’s peculiar … that those who can usually be counted on to highlight any disparity between blacks and whites — whatever the reason and no matter how slight the disparity – have said not a word about the effect of illegal immigration on blacks.”

Can plants be altruistic? You bet, says new CU-Boulder-led study – “‘Embryos with the same mother and father as the endosperm in their seed weighed significantly more than embryos with the same mother but a different father,’ said Diggle, a faculty member in CU-Boulder’s ecology and evolutionary biology department. ‘We found that endosperm that does not share the same father as the embryo does not hand over as much food — it appears to be acting less cooperatively.'” – previously: even plants do it!

How to Survive a Siberian Winter – “[T]he study shows how, over the more than 25,000 years that modern humans been lived in Siberia, various peoples have adapted to the region’s cold weather and meaty food sources through selection on multiple genes that control several biological mechanisms.”

National intelligence and personality – “‘[T]aken together, Big Five traits and IQs of various cultures statistically explained 70% of a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The most important predictors of economic success were intelligence and extraversion, which proved to be strongly positively related to GDP.'” – from mangan.

Some chores linked to less sex – “Couples in which the husband did plenty of traditionally male jobs reported more sex than those in which the guy didn’t.” – but you already knew that, didn’t you? (~_^)

bonus bonus: ‘I feel like a stranger where I live’ – “As new figures show ‘white flight’ from cities is rising, one Londoner writes a provocative personal piece about how immigration has drastically changed the borough where she has lived for 17 years.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: America’s most luxurious reservation: Huge homes of country’s richest Native American tribe where members make $1m EACH – “The tribe is also well-known for their charitable giving. It often donates cash to poorer tribes and charities across the country. Since 1996 they have given away $243.5 million…. ‘If it wasn’t for Shakopee, especially during this time when things are tough for loans, tough in this economy — there’s tribes who would be in a very tough situation,’ Ernest Stevens, chair of the National Indian Gaming Association explains. ‘There’s nobody in the gaming industry that I know of that can compare to what Shakopee does.’ In 2010 they were given a Jefferson Award for Public Service.”

How Much Hard Evidence Do You Need? – “[T]hree dopamine genes … examined, the dopamine transporter gene (DAT1), the dopamine D2 receptor gene (DRD2), and the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4), had small but reliable effects on educational attainment, such that those with a higher ‘dopamine index’ tended to attain less education…. But what’s much more interesting is that they found significant differences in the prevalence of the alleles of theses genes between the White and the Black subjects, with Blacks having tending to have higher dopamine indices.” – from jayman (at his new location!).

Bad News for Big Brains – “Humans and other creatures with large brains relative to their body size tend to have smaller guts and possibly fewer offspring. Scientists have debated for decades whether the two phenomena are related. Now a team of researchers says that they are—and that big brains do indeed make us smart.”

ihtg asks: I did not know there was a disappearance and then reemergence of the extended family in medieval Russia. Why did that happen?”

good question! i dunno. (^_^)

szopeno suggested: “maybe they [the zadrugas or extended families] are not reflection of distant past, but rather a common reaction to reappearing problem (external dangers, scarcity of resrouces etc).

that makes a lot of sense to me. perhaps family types — nuclear or extended — are just populations’ responses to their environmental/economic conditions. if there are plenty of resources — plenty of land for all — perhaps families can be small ’cause everyone can spread out. but if population density is high and there’s a shortage of resources/land, perhaps families band together. certainly cousin marriage generally seems to be a way of keeping wealth or resources (land, goats, whatever) in the family, so maybe keeping the extended family physically together is another sort of response to difficult-ish circumstances. keep the labor force together along with the wealth. and keep everyone nearby the family’s resources so that they can benefit from them, provided there’s enough to go around.

i’m going to hypothesize right now, though, that it’s probably easier for families in inbred populations to clump together than in outbred populations — or it would come more naturally to them anyhow.

ihtg was responding to this quote from that racey book, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 [pg. 138]:

“Changes in Russian versions of canon law on incest coincided with changes in family structure. The proto-Slavic zadruga fell into disuse as a residential system in twelfth-to-fifteenth century Russia, although landholding continued to be communal. There the residential household usually consisted of a nuclear family, occasionally joined by an elderly parent or a young bride.”

twelfth-to-fifteenth century “russia” seems to cover (if i’ve got it right) the latter part of the kievan rus’ principalities [882–13th century], the first part of the muscovy days [1283–1547] and all of the novgorod republic [1136–1478] (and other polities?).

note that although nuclear families seem to have been living on their own in russia during these centuries, “landholding continued to be communal.” (this sounds rather like the medieval men of kent.)

“The vast majority of the Kievan Rus’ population, who both materially supported the Riurikid princes and depended upon them, were peasant farmers (smerdy). Despite variations derived from tribal background, geographic location, and other factors, the peasants of Kievan Rus’ shared many characteristics and were regarded as a single undifferentiated social stratum. Among the free members of society, peasant men and women had the lowest social status.

“Peasants lived in their own huts with their nuclear families, and farmed their own plots of land using their own tools and livestock. Their households were grouped into rural villages and organized into communes (vervi or miry), which had their roots in the tribal and clannic ties among the population. By the Kievan era, however, the communes had a territorial identity as much as a clannic one. Members of each commune shared common pasture lands, meadows and forests, and fishing and hunting rights. They also, importantly, shared responsibilities for tax payment and other legal obligations.”

so these kievan rus’ communes were clan or tribal based. nuclear families may have been living in their own, independent houses, but extended family bonds were clearly still there.

in Lord and Peasant in Russia: From the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century, jerome blum suggests [chapters two and three] that the change over from slash-and-burn farming techniques — which required a lot of labor — to a two- or three-field agricultural system resulted in the breakdown of extended families in medieval russia. maybe. both he and martin also talk about the kievan rus’ opening up new areas of forest for settlement, so maybe that right there offered an outlet for the apparently expanding population. maybe you didn’t have to stay at home with mom and pop and everyone else anymore if you went off and moved to some unsettled area of the dnieper valley. i dunno.

in Peasant Farming in Muscovy, robert smith (no, not THAT one) talks about that population expanding out into new territories as well, so again maybe that’s the key to the nuclear families in russia during these centuries. maybe. smith also claims that, at least in the 1400s, there is no evidence for extended family living arrangements [pgs. 80-83].

i don’t know anything about the family types in the novgorod republic (yet!), so i’ll have to leave it there for now.
_____

todd categorized the russian family type as an exogamous, patriarchal community family. he was talking about the 1500s-1800s. dunno if he had that right or not, but it certainly seems as though for the four hundred preceding that period, russians were not living in extended family groups — at least not in the same household. it’s likely they lived in the same neighborhood — hamlet, village, commune — though since land was still held communally in the clan-based communes.